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Late last week, the interim chief of West Midlands Fire Service wrote to the Chair of West Midlands Fire Authority to lodge a vote of no confidence in the Authority in an unprecedented move that is likely to pique the interest of both the Home Office and HMICFRS as relationships have clearly broken down.
Choosing to use LinkedIn to share his thoughts on the performance of the Authority and add more detail about why he was not applying for the permanent position, CEO Oliver Lee voiced his exasperation at the lack of response by Authority members to questions from WMFS staff.
“The Authority is wholly unable and incapable of properly looking after and presiding over its 1900 people. This is why people in this sector are so scared. It is also why it all remains the same. Until this changes, nothing will change.”
A follow up post shortly after showed that Cllr Brackenridge, Chair of the Authority had seen it, wrote that he was ‘disappointed’ in Lee for doing so and requested a meeting the next day (4 October).
And on the morning of 4 October, Lee shared the vote of no confidence letter with his LinkedIn followers. The letter is signed by him as CEO, the Chief Financial Officer and an Assistant CEO.
“We believe that in a series of ways the Authority is both unwilling and incapable of exercising its responsibilities to WMFS Indeed, the Authority has scant understanding of WMFS and little appetite to address this. Consequently, mistake after mistake has been made over the years until this day.”
Lee was appointed interim CEO of WMFS earlier this year after the sudden death of the former WMFS Chief Fire Officer Wayne Brown. In May, he spoke to Emergency Services Times about his first seven weeks in post, describing WMFS as one team of 1900 people.
West Midlands Fire Authority comprises 16 members drawn from local authorities in the area and also includes the Labour Police and Crime Commissioner. The Chair is from Wolverhampton and is one of 13 Labour members of the Authority.
The reasons for the breakdown in trust between the leadership of WMFS and the Authority are not provided by Lee, beyond the phrasing in his LinkedIn posts, so the question remains, what happens next?
Earlier this year, South Wales Fire and Rescue Authority was replaced with four independent commissioners who were brought in after an intervention by the Welsh Government. It followed the publication of a damning report by Fenella Morris KC who found the culture of the service to be toxic and the fire authority not fit for purpose.
The Home Office is responsible for fire and rescue in England and has similar powers to those in Wales to make this kind of intervention. It could choose to intervene given the very public nature of the breakdown of the relationship between Lee and the Authority.
Professor Pete Murphy is Head of Research at Nottingham Business School and has written extensively about governance and assurance in the emergency services. He says that there is no precedent for a chief fire officer to issue a vote of no confidence in a fire authority.
“If someone was going to whistle blow on unacceptable or illegal behaviours or actions by the members, you’d expect it to be the CEO.”
He explores the options for what could happen next from a Home Office perspective, saying that that it is unlikely that they don’t know about this and doing nothing may not now be an option. He says it depends on what the strength of the evidence is for making any kind of intervention.
“In my view, what’s likely to happen is that if there is sufficient evidence, the Home Office could use its powers under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 or under Best Value legislation to intervene and ultimately could appoint Independent Commissioners as you saw in South Wales. The question is, what is the evidence for intervening?”
He acknowledges that what happened in Wales was a drastic step and says that what’s more likely to happen in the West Midlands is that the Home Office would commission an independent or corporate inspection to gather the evidence; the organisation best placed to do this may be His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS).
In England, the last time the government used its powers to inspect in this way was in 2017, when Best Value inspectors went into Avon Fire and Rescue Service after ‘a number of allegations’ were made. The resulting inspection report contained 62 recommendations for the interim chief to deliver but the authority remained in place – with a relatively new Chair – and no more interventions were made.
Prior to this, there was a similar inspection in Essex. This was carried out by former senior civil servant Irene Lucas. In her report published in September 2015, she described the culture of Essex County Fire and Rescue Service as “toxic.” This led to the abolition of Essex Fire and Rescue Authority and the creation of the first Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner in October 2017.
“I think you could send an independent expert into WMFS and in a matter of months they could gather the evidence to advise the Secretary of State about what needs to be done.”
Pete says, based on recent experience from failing local authorities, that the government would prefer the Authority to self-refer, but where that doesn’t happen, it may be compelled to act first.
At the time of writing, no response from the Authority to Lee’s letter was publicly available. The next full Authority meeting is scheduled to take place on 14 October.
